dot hack GRANDEUR
by Valefor
Summary: [AU] Despair, maddness, fear. Skeith was but a catalyst. How do you save one who marches on towards damnnation? (Completed)
1. Memory

**[[ _Here's a hunk of obligatory author's notes!!_**

This story has had bad omens tied with it from the very start. For me, big ideas rarely ever see the light of day, and those that do are rarely put together into a form I find even minutely presentable. I'll take a stab at it, but please be aware that I may never finish. :(

Anyway, the premise is one that's been done quite a few times already: Sora after "the incident" and what might have happened to him, but with an AU spin to it. Cookies to anyone who can pick up on the influences that will end up showing up on subsequent chapters (of which there should be 3, for a grand total of 4 chappies as of now). Not for one who doesn't want some things spoiled. Spans episode 26 of SIGN and onward, through events in Outbreak. Also, several liberties taken in terms of appearances, names, and the like whereever details have been previously left vague. Keep in mind that events presented may or may not be in chronological order. Here's to bad habits, once more. :D ]]

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**[ Chapter 1 : Memory ]**

She couldn't take her eyes off him. It was one thing to grow accustomed to what could have been described as a barbarian of sorts, but even that didn't compare to the man who sat next to her in his modest white sedan. The hair was the same, and the eyes too. Toss out all that blue body paint and put some clothes on him and there he was: the same person, but not quite. He took the attention in good humor, pulling great amusement from the blush her cheeks would take whenever he smiled.

"It's just a little bit further," he announced after giving the road ahead of them a good squint through aged square glasses. Traffic in these parts consisted mainly of bicycles and those clunky trucks that took vegetables and rice from the farms in the nearby country side in to the markets at the borders between the urban and the rural. Trees, lampposts, and gray stone walls flashed by the windshields, but she wasn't looking.

"Now you'll have to excuse me if the place is still a mess. In all honesty I wasn't expecting to have you move in so soon... and it's been a while since I've had any, ah, extended visitors." The manner in which he spoke was the same as well - the kind gentleman with a heart of gold. _Just like a big teddy bear._

"It's ok, Sakuma-san. I can help you clean up."

He stole another glance at her, the young woman who had dominated his thoughts in recent months. Having her there was unreal, for it was only a few days ago that she had been wrapped in the arms of a coma, and they had been fighting for the key to free her from _The World_. Now that she was here...

Kazuhiro Sakuma nodded. Red light... Cut the gas, ease the breaks, check the mirrors... Left, right... "Yeah, that'd be great. I started cleaning out a room for you, but cleaning in this case meant something along the lines of 'moving a pile of boxes from one room to another.'"

The girl, who he had learned was named Mitsuki Saiga, shifted the duffle bag that was currently the sole item in her possession (save the clothes she had on) on her lap. "Good thing I don't have much luggage, huh?"

Suddenly she looked very tired, and her gaze wandered towards the sidewalk. Thinking of her father, no doubt. "What about all your stuff over at his place...?"

"Don't need any of it. They'll just bring back bad memories..."

A car honked from behind them, reminding Sakuma-san of the green light that hovered on the traffic light's face. His little white car puttered itself into motion again, slowing to take a turn into a driveway not even a block or two down the street from the traffic light.

The house, just like the car that would sit in its driveway and the man who owned it, was modest. It was a two story squeezed into a square outlined with a tall stone wall, open only at the driveway's entrance and by the end of a short paved path that led up to the front door from the street. A tall tree sat just behind it, in the lot's pathetically tiny backyard, and she could hear the faint bubbling of a waterfall over the sounds of chirping birds.

The two got out of the car and made their way into the house. The interior wasn't anything fancy, either. Mitsuki grinned at the feel of soft carpeting beneath her feet. He motioned for her to follow him and marched up a flight of stairs. The upper floor held the bedrooms, apparently - they passed by a half closed door that held piles and piles of books, from what Mitsuki could see, and went down a hall that was flanked by a number of piles of boxes. The room itself was empty except for a bed that hadn't been made just yet and a desk set beside a window that had a PC sitting on top of it. A smell hung thick in the air - cigarettes...? She scrunched her nose up and gave him a glance, at which he shrugged apologetically.

"It's not much, really, but we can get you fixed up soon. There's some stores a few blocks from here that have furniture and decorations and things like that."

It was then that Mitsuki noticed something. His brow was perpetually upturned at angles that were barely noticeable, and his eyes seemed to have the darndest time keeping track of one thing for very long. Confusion would fix that in a second, though, because Mitsuki started to giggle. "What?"

"It's hard to think of you as being so nervous," she confessed in the middle of a fit of tinkling laughter. "Everything will be all right, right? I don't want you stressing yourself out just because of me."

While his nerves didn't seem to settle that much at all, he did manage to take a deep sigh and grin wearily at her. "You could have told me that in the beginning."

"Would you have listened to me back then?" she countered. 

It was true that they had not met under the best conditions. She had held tightly onto the ways of a loner, rejecting his attention just as much as Mimiru's. Things were so much different then...

Kazuhiro shrugged and shook his head, solemn as an owl. "No, probably not. Trouble's meant to be taken care of."

She donned a hurt expression, flashing puppy dog eyes at her new guardian. "Trouble?! That's all I was? I see how it is!" A mock attack was launched against him, a barrage of gentle pokes and pats, but he was quick to engulf both the attacks and the attacker in a warm fatherly hug. Years had passed since he had heard laughter - pure, beautiful laughter - in that house, too many years. At long last, it was starting to feel like a home again.

Their momentary giddiness subsided, dwindling back into the semi-awkward silence that had dominated the spaces between them. Comparing expectations within The World and without was an impossible thing to do, something that Kazuhiro learned very quickly. In the beginning he was certain of what he knew: Tsukasa's tale was one not to be taken lightly, and while it was hard to believe at first, it wasn't something to be ignored either. The boy had come across something dreadfully wrong and no one knew anything about it. He remembered watching a bit of the news one evening while he was washing dishes and hearing the mention of a comatose girl rushed to a local hospital. From then on, everything changed.

Several hours ago he had been in _The World_ himself with the rest of their unofficial party: Mimiru, Subaru, BT, Crim, and even Ginkan and the legendary Helba herself had all pushed on in an offensive that they had hoped would take aim at whatever it was that kept Tsukasa a prisoner. They had fought fiercely at the eerie cathedral hidden away in the Delta server's fields, and when Tsukasa, Subaru, and Mimiru disappeared into a warp of some sort, they had relocated to the Net Slum. When the three had returned, Aura was with them, along with a mysterious monster...

A short while after that, he received a phone call. The man on the other line had hurriedly identified himself as "Shinichiro" or something to that effect and said she was waiting for him at the hospital. Before Kazuhiro could question the man, he had muttered something about work, apologized, and hung up. A girl at the hospital...? It had to be her. So he left, and sure enough the person he had known up to then to be Tsukasa was there waiting with another girl, the Lady Subaru herself.

Sighing, she gently slid away from him and scrutinized her new room, or what there was to be scrutinized. A pang of ill tidings struck Kazuhiro when he noticed that she was looking square at the computer that sat silently atop the desk. "I, er, figured that maybe you'd need one. I had a spare anyway, so I put the newer one--"

"Is it on there?" she asked quietly.

"Err, _The World_? Yeah... This computer was the one I was using and I didn't think to uninstall it or anything like that. If you want, I can help take it off of there."

She shook her head and grinned faintly at him. "No, that's ok... It might be fun to really play with them sometime. Like... really play."

_That's right_, he thought. _All she was doing before was try and figure out what was going on..._

An opened her mouth as if to speak but it was not her throat that made any noise. A quiet gurgle from her stomach made her cheeks flush an embarrassed pink. "Erk... I don't suppose...?"

He was already pulling car keys back out from his pocket and making his way down the stairs. "Let's talk some more over lunch, shall we? My treat."

An was more than happy to oblige.

--------------

Her own private paradise had never been much to look at. The sentiment was even truer now - where brown and dirty violets had dominated before, now a sickly palette of blacks and whites adorned an already ruined ruin. The prize it once held was no longer present, nor was the one who had created it in the first place. At least she was not there in the truest sense possible: a tricky feat, considering that she was the very essence of _The World_.

A barren place now, not worth watching. Grave for a soul already forgotten.

They never came back. They never questioned, not once! Not in the words he had scryed from the endless data streams passing through _The World_. When you're on the inside, such things look very different. No longer does the data that composes the ground resemble a ground, nor the data that composes a sky look like a sky. Fragments of numbers, meaningless at first glance, flowed in an ocean's worth of data all around. Outsiders would never see the basic truth. Only the ideals the truth was meant to represent. The digital frontier had two faces, only one of which was ever seen by the average user: the side dominated by vision, the ability to perceive values in the form of pictures, images. Everything from characters to the fields that they populated. However the face was not restrained to vision alone. Sound and even the illusion of touch made the package all together much more pleasant than the abstract strings of Truth he had come to recognize, and for that reason it was often taken for granted. Once upon a time, he himself was guilty of that. Now, _The World_ was very different.

It took getting used to. The transition was abrupt, but necessary as adaptation was for any sort of creature. _Change not and be crushed_, whispered Fate, _and leave a world better off without you_.

A fate worse than death was what she promised. The initial pain of it all was unbearable - a whirlwind of blazing knives that tore him from himself, and the horrible coldness of the crimson prison he was thrust into. "Help me," he had said - tried to say. They looked at him with confusion, then fear. Weapons were raised. From beyond the boundaries of vision, a wave glinted and rose. Something was happening. Something happened. Skeith screamed, and he felt the onslaught of a sudden darkness that overtook the field he had gone to upon her command (Aura, get her). No longer did the physical exist. All around, chains of the abstract Truth that composed _The World_ ran like currents through the blackest seas.

He was gone.

In the darkness thereafter he waited, squirming in the confines that could not be seen nor felt with the hope of Tsukasa returning holding him away from oblivion. Morganna - that was what she was called, he would learn shortly after - rarely spoke to him. No one did. No longer did Sora exist as anything besides fragments of data caught within a corrupted shell.

Eventually Skeith would happen upon another, the man known as Orca. Another memory to be forgotten, but he was not. A Twin Blade sought revenge.

Sora waited. He waited even now, hovering high in the emptiness and corrosion that had taken over the place. Myriad structures still floated about, beads on cancerous strings, but they had slowly degraded into clumps and chunks of non-matter. All of it had been mostly forgotten as well, and thus it was not needed anymore. Neither by her nor anyone else of note. Still, the crimson staff stood even in the absence of one master. 

Slowly, slowly, another took the reigns. At first it was a clumsy affair, what with being trapped within the staff. Powerless. (_hopeless, oh god let me-_) That was before Skeith's destruction; now he was faced with the tiniest of freedoms. He did not possess a body any longer, per se: there was no room for bodies in the river of Truth. His existence was dictated by his own set of Truths, free to mingle with and through the rest of The World as he saw fit. 

_classid: tblade  
true  
chlevel: 99  
true  
playerid: sora  
true_

Sora. The name itself had no meaning on it's own; yet another string of characters meaningless without context. He puzzled, wrapping around its fragment as if to consider its finer implications. That was him in some way or fashion, or it was once upon a time. He thought - 

_- red light. Red light. A pulse traced over with a jagged line, headed off by a single blip of blood red. A machine fed oxygen into his lungs, another nutrient into his veins. Clothes wet with a mother's tears, air thick with her cries -_

- and thought he didn't very much like what he thought.

So he stopped, and he waited. All the time in the world.

He'd come.

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**[[ _Edit note, 12-9-03: I checked over the grammar and spelling but neither are very strong suits. :/ Please pardon if any mistakes remain._ ]]**


	2. Whispers

**[[ _Took me long enough. I have trouble writing the simple things, but when I can go off on weird tangents it's all natural. :/ Well, whatever._**

Broken Miho: thanks a ton! I had no idea, really, so... I used the names of the voice actors. o.o;; Except for Bear - I think they pointed out his name was like Sakuma something in one of the fansubs, didn't they? Clever, clever. I'll make edits where appropriate, and keep those names in mind. ^^ But admittedly I am lazy so I haven't looped up the other names... So I'll take your advice on Tsukasa and Subaru, but for the sake of maintaining the AU theme thing going, everyone else gets alternate names. :/ Lazy Valefor, queen of the slackers.

Crystal17: and a whole bunch of thanks to you, too. :) Folks like you keep that grand circle of inspiration going 'round and 'round... It's really an honor to be admired by a talented author like yourself. Seriously. :O

And of course thanks to everyone else. :) A writer without an audience is nothing at all. Or something. ]]

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**[ Chapter 2 : Whispers ]**

Aimless, listless, restless. Rest? How do you sleep amid the talking-talking-talking? Quiet eludes me. It has to exist, it has to... Not in my place, there exists noises I do not wish to hear. Other places, the talk and chatter of fools. Thousands and thousands of voices cascading over my thoughts.

At last, a place of peace - hulking beasts wander the halls, plump with the flesh of the inexperienced. So I imagine (without reason, but I humor myself all the same). The chatter is much quieter here. A stray voice or two wandering the field above the dungeon.

Rest here. We settle, and wait.

--------

"Are you sure you don't mind?" An asked timidly. A cordless phone was held gently as if it were so fragile as to crumble if it did not have the full support of her hands.

Kazuhiro laughed and shook his head. "Not at all! You go on ahead and make whatever calls you need. I know how teenagers love their telephones."

Gratefully, An nodded and trotted up the stairs in search of a little privacy. Even though it had been a few months since she had first come to her new home and she had settled in quite well, she still had a tendency to ask permission for the simplest things. Kazuhiro thought it somewhat cute.

He turned back to the dishes that still demanded cleaning, turning the faucet back on and dipping his hands back into the soapy water. She was just as timid in real life as she had been in the game, but she had shown a healthy amount of chattiness on the few phone calls she had made since her arrival. Over dinner she had even mentioned maybe meeting up with Suba- no, Mariko at a nearby mall.

"She said that Shinichiro-san might show up too. Looks like everyone's been wanting to meet up with me now that I'm out."

"Shinichiro-san?" he asked, quirking his brow. He remembered the name, vaguely, from before he left to meet up with An.

"Crim. And he might bring BT - I forget her real name - and then I might talk to Mimiru..."

Kazuhiro smiled and toyed a bit with the spaghetti that sat on his plate. "So we might have to get everybody together, won't we?"

"Yeah, looks like it. Mariko-chan said she already talked to Ginkan, too, and he might try and take a day off of work if we can actually pull it off. Everybody but Helba and Sora has already been contacted."

He wound some noodles around a fork and chewed thoughtfully at it. "Helba doesn't surprise me... but Sora? I'd have thought he'd jump right on top of a chance to meet up with you."

_Tsukasa-kun, let's be friends!_

They both fell quiet, picking boredly at a few scraps of their food. An remembered the rage she felt behind Mother's voice, and the cool defiance Sora shielded them with... and then there was the monster.

"He was with us when we woke Aura up. I don't know about afterwards... He stayed behind when we went to the Net Slum."

There was a question written in her voice, one that Kazuhiro could pick up on easily. A deep unease, the notion that maybe something wasn't quite right. "Maybe he decided that being a troublemaker in a game wasn't all that it was cut out to be," he ventured.

The rest of dinner had been quiet. An simply shrugged and finished off her plate, and excused herself from the table to fetch the phone. He set the last of the plates onto the drying rack, deciding to let evaporation dry them off for him, and went into his study. It was tucked away in a crowded room beside the foot of the stairs. Wide double-doors opened into the living area, but the doors themselves were nowhere to be seen: more boxes and tall stacks of books kept them well hidden. He navigated through a jungle of untidyness to a desk decorated with piles of papers and a slightly aged computer. The one he used to use, a new one purchased recently on a whim, was currently up in An's room. He imagined that this one was nearly identical, except for a considerable lack of shine and cleanliness and a little less juice in its processor. The fans inside gave a strained whirr as he booted it up.

The ALTIMIT OS brought itself upon the screen, but he didn't even have to look to find the icon for _The World_ on its interface. It was a matter of habit now - whenever he sat at the computer in his leisure time, _The World_ was often the first thing he opened up. With deft keystrokes, he typed in his user ID and password, and prepared himself for a brief trip into _The World_.

The sudden log-off forced on by Helba reset his starting location to the water capital of Mac Anu. It felt strange logging in again without many worries about the well being of a certain individual. It would have been foolish to assume everything was well in _The World_, however, so he didn't.

Someone must have been paying attention to their member address list. He hardly took a step off the slightly raised platform that the town's Chaos Gate sat on before he felt the presence of another gating in just beside him. "It's been a while, Kuma-san. I trust she's doing well?" inquired a familiar stoic voice. The woman with golden locks and emerald robes strode up beside him, nodding curtly in greeting.

"Pretty well by the looks of it. No signs of trouble or anything like that."

They made their way towards an alleyway tucked behind one of the shops, where people rarely visit. An old haunt they used to share, back when Kazuhiro paid more attention to The World. There was nothing to be seen there except the river and a line of stone walls. BT leaned against one of the posts that stuck out from the ground, gazing at Bear with her dispassionate eyes. He could have sworn that he saw relief coiled within those orbs, but it was difficult to tell with one such as she - her mood was always so volatile. 

"That's good to hear. You would hardly believe how worried Mimiru has been... Even Crim was wondering how she was. I didn't know what to tell him."

Bear gave her a grin, merciful by his standards. "Still chasing after him, are we?"

He was rewarded with a cattish sneer and the narrowing of her eyes. "He's good company. The only other I get usually is Mimiru, and Subaru from time to time... Kids. I can't spend all my leisure time with kids, can I?"

"What about Ginkan?"

"Do you even need to ask?" She shook her head and frowned up at the sky, more specifically at a feathery cloud that she had chosen to be her scapegoat for the moment. "Besides, judging from what Subaru has been suggesting, I might get to deal with him on the outside soon."

Bear chuckled as he found a place against the wall to lean against with his arms crossed over his vividly painted avatar's chest. "So you heard? It might be interesting, you know if we can actually pull it off. We managed to save Tsu-, erm, An, that is, but you know how getting a bunch of strangers together can be."

"Mimiru doesn't live too far away from me, and apparently Ginkan lives somewhere in your area, as does Subaru. Crim's got the most distance between his place and yours but that's what trains are for." When she noticed another grin warming up onto Bear's face she shrugged nonchalantly. "I've done a little bit of talking myself. Wouldn't want to miss out on anything big."

The Blademaster nodded. "I'm going to assume Helba hasn't made any plans to join us."

"Bingo. The same goes to Sora, too, but I assume no one will be heartbroken because of his absence."

"An mentioned that no one's been able to reach him for a while, not since the day she got out..."

"Don't do that."

Bear, taken aback, blinked. "Huh?"

BT was looking straight at him with a strange shade of intensity - not anger, nor apathy, but a dry brittle hint of amusement wrapped so flawlessly in emerald and glitter. "That, with your eyes. You're thinking, and what you're thinking is making you worry. It's not hard to read you, Bear, it never has been. He's probably just found something better to do. Do you remember how wishy-washy he was?"

Bear forced himself to nod. The faint ache that sat around his shoulders failed to leave him when he sighed. "Yeah... Yeah. It's just... hard to take some things lightly ever since that all happened."

Much to Bear's surprise, she reached over and gently touched his shoulder. "It's over now. Things are ok... Don't stress yourself out. It won't do you any good, trust me. You just keep An safe and happy, I'll give a talk to the others and I'll send you a message when we've got something worked out. Is this weekend open for you two?"

"Yes."

"Good. Plan to have company." Then abruptly she logged off, leaving him alone with his thoughts in the alley. Was it really going to happen...? And so soon, at that - Saturday was only a matter of days away. One by one a list of chores built up in his mind, one that quickly became a little too long for his liking but...

Kazuhiro shrugged and logged himself off of _The World_. The boxes that haunted the room watched as he rose and began rearranging them into neat stacks and stacks of stacks which he pushed up against the walls. Having a mess of a house wouldn't be very fitting of Bear, who thought himself a rather responsible and orderly person. A second, third, and fourth stack reaching up to the ceiling was pushed into a corner of the study, which took care of the ones in that room specifically. Mentally he tallied up rough estimates of the other miscellaneous things that could do with being tucked out of sight, and it took but a few seconds before his body began to sweat preemptively.

_If a room is filled up with junk and a legion of boxes, but no one sees it, is it a mess? Out of sight is out of mind, so..._

He rolled up his sleeves and set to work.

--------

Sora did not know if time had passed: perhaps he had fallen asleep somehow and the minutes and hours had gone on by. It felt more like everything, Time included, had been encased in cement. That would certainly explain the monochrome gray that surrou-

Someone was there.

(_Tsukasa?_)

A boy in orange, the first and last flame in the ashen hollows of the dungeon. Next to last. He was staring at the staff. It came to him then that he knew who the boy was. Orca spoke of him on many occasions. The boy spoke as well. Sora listened:

"- it still here? Skeith is gone... Orca? ... Yasuhiko, can you hear me? It's me, Kite. I heard people talk about seeing this thing but... Please, Yasuhiko, be there. I want to let you go home."

(_Home, take me home. I'm hungry._)

Kite reached out toward the staff. Sora watched his fingers, suddenly very aware of their shape; numbers swam all around him, vines of code tailing code everywhere but on him. Pleading eyes stared hard into the heart of the staff, sad, human. Sad human. Sadly human. He felt cold again, frozen as he had been when Skeith took him. He shouldn't have been there, not this Twin Blade - who was he? He watched his friend get taken in, he struck down Skeith, but he had no meaning. He wasn't Tsukasa. But he didn't understand; such was the nature of ignorance. His fingers reached closer, cookie-cut from the rest of _The World_.

(_Help me..._)

The touch burned the burn of ice on naked flesh. Sora screamed soundlessly, recoiling from Kite to little avail: the staff bore it all unmoving, a glow permeating its surface. Little by little, beneath the pain, Sora felt the staff disintegrate. Threads ran off it, unwinding the whole like an old sweater. When it felt like he could take it no longer it stopped, dropping Sora into an exhausted numbness. The staff was gone.

(_... Thank you..._)

Sora looked (up, down, it was all the same) and saw himself. What he was once before, as fuzzy memories would tell him, wrought out in ethereal color. Kite stared, stunned and disbelieving... No. One long ago he learned to read the face like a picture book. He was disappointed. And he stayed disappointed even as the phantom-self nodded and faded away. He had been expecting Orca.

Cold meant nothing to him anymore. Everywhere at once, he shivered despite the obsoleteness of it (no body, no warmth), and knew far too well that Tsukasa-kun would not be looking.

--------

She had heard the blips too many times to recount, for too many hours to number. They no longer registered as outside noises, just the steady pattern of involuntary vibrations running through her hears. She didn't even have to look to know that it had no changed, and the doctors suggested deep in the occasional synopsis they would offer that it very well may never change again.

The woman was slouched back in a thickly cushioned seat that sat beside the bed that housed her son. Her eyes were closed but she could not sleep, not with the painful hiss of the respirators that hardly kept breath in his lungs. So she sat, empty with anguish and oblivious to everything but the respirators, deep into the night.

At some point she became _aware_. Eyes creaked open, fighting with the sting of insomnia. He had not moved, the machines were still working... Nothing had changed. Almost nothing: a mother's intuition was a keen and frightful thing when a child's life was at question. Confusion bled into frustration, and she started hard at the pale face that could not move.

Then she heard it. The green dot on the ECG leapt about frantically, and the _blip-blip_ that accompanied it was racing. In an instant she was at the door, wrenching it open and screaming into the hall for a doctor, a nurse, a bloody janitor if there was one around. A nurse who was present in a neighboring room rushed out to her aid.

"The thing," the mother croaked. "The thing, it's not normal! What's going on?" She gestured frantically at the machines her son was hooked up to. "What's happening? Dear God, what's happening?"

The nurse hastily checked over the monitors, gradually looking more and more perplexed. The mother knew too, as it came as suddenly like being dropped in ice water. The discrepancy was no longer, the _blip-blip_ returned to being a _blip-blip_, the green line bounced along lazily as it had before.

"Ma'am," the nurse started hesitantly, thumbing through words to say what needed to be said. "I know this must be a very trying time for you but maybe you should try and get some sleep..."

But she needn't be told. Already, the mother sunk back down into the cushiony seat, face sunk into the sleeves of the sweater she wore (still cold in spite of its presence), and sobbed.

--------

Little by little, excitement had been building up within the little white house in the middle of the street. Moving from room to room became less a test of balance and agility as boxes and random things were relocated into the study in an act that just _had_ to defy some law of physics somewhere. The room had never looked all that big to start with, yet Sakuma-san was able to stuff an impossible amount of stuff in there with plenty of room to spare for the desk and some space to walk through.

"I may be something of a packrat but I'm not much of one. Did you notice a few of them have moved outside to sit on the curb? They're going to be adopted sometime next week," he said over a newspaper during breakfast.

Along with the clean up had come the restoration of a few rooms. For the most part, Kazuhiro had only kept up with the study, the living room, kitchen/dining room, bedroom, and bathroom. The remaining two free rooms (not including the second bathroom), one upstairs and another downstairs, as well as several hallways had served as repositories for the boxes. The room upstairs had been cleared out some time prior to An moving in and it currently served as her room. The other room was chiefly ignored by Kazuhiro, at least; An took the time to glance through some of the things once or twice, but she never found anything of interest. An sat in the room, which was now empty and much larger than she had remembered it. Without all the junk there, it was actually a decent sized rectangular room with a bay window that looked out into the backyard. Sun washed through the linen-curtained windows, basking her and the cream colored carpeting in warmth. Out back was a small yard that was dominated chiefly by an ancient tree with branches that arced down to cover much of the ground in its shade. At its foot was a small fountain with a waterfall, all constructed out of large smooth stones. She had gone out to get a closer look at it once before and was pleasantly surprised to find koi swimming around inside.

Presently, Kazuhiro was out in the small storage shed snuggled against the corner of the back fencing in search for some chairs. The dining area was dominated by a large circular table, which was dominated in turn by an electric griddle. Lunch was just a short while away, and with a party of five coming in, what better way to feed everyone than to have a yakiniku* party? A whole stockpile of meats and veggies sat waiting in the fridge. All that was missing were the people who were due to show up any minute now.

The phone rang. An nearly jumped out of her skin: the telephones Sakuma-san had were old fashioned and were fixed with actual bells that rang very very loudly. She dashed into the living room after recovering from the surprise to answer it. "Hello?"

"Ah, An-chan?" said a quiet voice on the other end. An immediately recognized it as belonging to Mariko, who was alternately known as Subaru.

"Mariko-chan! How are you? You all didn't get lost did you?"

"No, we're all fine. Could you do us a favor and open the door, please?"

An started for the front door but halted in the entry hall, eyeing it suspiciously. "You're here?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Why didn't you just ring the doorbell?"

"... Ah, well, Shinichiro-san said this might be a little more dramatic..."

"Oh. Well, um, see you in a second." She hung the phone back up on it's cradle and returned to the door. Her hand brushed against the doorknob but she hesitated to open it. It was really happening... She was going to meet the people who had helped her, and who had practically saved her life. An took a deep breath, exhaled, and pulled the door open.

On the porch was a small crowd, but the face that headed them up was the only one that An knew. Mariko smiled up at An with her sober smile. "We're here!"

Standing behind her was a tall man in slacks and a collared shirt that was left un-tucked. To either side were two women: one was young, probably a little younger than An herself, wearing shorts and a tank top, and the other older woman was more conservatively dressed in a long skirt and a crisp long-sleeved blouse. Straggling behind was a man probably a big younger than the first, who wore a simple jeans and t-shirt combo. An went breathless: these were real human beings, lacking the garb and weaponry they usually toted around in The World... Real, live people...

She stopped herself from staring, stepping aside from the doorway and gesturing towards the inside of the house. "Please, come inside! I think we have lots to talk about and we might as well get everyone comfortable."

One by one they filed in, taking off shoes and setting them on the stone tiled floor right by the door. From the back of the house she heard Kazuhiro call out, "Hey! Everyone's here?" He was setting chairs around the table in the dining area beside the kitchen. "Well, if anyone's hungry I can get lunch started in just a minute... We can get everyone properly introduced, too."

Everyone took places around the table quietly. Mariko stayed by An, of course, who sat next to where Kazuhiro would be once he finished passing out bowls, plates, and chopsticks. A number of the plates held side dishes; on one, a salad of sliced roasted squid, another a helping of kimchee*... Rice and a dish of yakiniku sauce were passed out, as well as drinks. Soon the griddle was alive with the crackle-snap of food cooking. Kazuhiro took his seat and spoke first, bringing business down among them.

"I hope the trip was enjoyable for you all, and I hope that this visit will be as well. The place is a little small but... I like to think of it as nice and cozy. But anyway, I suppose we should get to the introductions. My name is Kazuhiro Sakuma, but you might know me better as Bear. Nice to meet you all again." He nodded around the table and sat down, touching An upon the shoulder: _your turn_. She stood then, smiling timidly at the group.

"Hello everyone. My name is An Shouji...I'm, uh, Tsukasa. Sort of. Nice to meet you."

The baton was passed on to Mariko, who... couldn't quite stand up. So instead, she bowed her head. Violet hair swept down around her shoulders. "My name is Mariko Misato, as well as Subaru. Pleased to meet you."

Beside her was the other young woman, who had short brown hair that flared out just above the shoulders. Bright glittery amber eyes lit up her face just as much as the cheery smile that flashed across her lips. "Hiya! I'm Megumi Toyoguchi, also known as Mimiru-chan!"

Another shift, this time ending up on the man with the jeans. He was a very simple looking young man, perhaps a few years older than An, with a sharp jaw line and neatly combed dark brown hair. "Isshin Chiba... I'm Ginkan. Pleasure to meet you."

The other man, who wore a very feline expression on the defined features of his face (not too unlike a certain Long Arm) nodded politely. "The Crimson Lightning himself, the esteemed Shinichiro Miki."

And finally, it was the older woman's turn to speak. Her vivid green eyes peered at each of the others nonchalantly. "Akiko Hiramatsu, otherwise known as BT."

Kazuhiro reached out with chopsticks in hand, nudging things that were done and things that needed more cooking around upon the griddle. "It's certainly a delight meeting all of you finally. Please, dig right in! The food isn't going to eat itself, you know."

Megumi looked more than happy with the invitation. She held her chopsticks up high as if she were preparing for a toast, and she smiled wildly as the rest followed suit. All at once they gave a hearty "Ittadakimaaaaaaasu!" and dove in to the feast set before them.

--------

Kazuhiro's face was brighter than An ever remembered it being. The house was alive with conversation and laughter, with more activity than there had been in what was undoubtedly a very long time. The same was true for An. There was hardly ever a time where she didn't at least have a vague grin of contentment on her face, but that was different from being happy. Kazuhiro knew that very, very well.

The group eventually migrated into the living room but the younger girls had segregated themselves into the backyard where they lounged about the waterfall fountain like a trio of pixies. Being cooped up with adults, as interesting as they may be, just wasn't any fun.

Besides, girls had girl talk.

"So what's he like?" asked a very inquisitive Megumi. She was sprawled out in the grass with her hands tucked beneath the back of her head. Strips of light crossed her body, crudely mimicking the tattoos she wore as a Heavy Blade.

An and Mariko sat beside the waterfall, occasionally giving the water's surface a good poke to see where the koi would dash off to. "What do you mean?" An asked back.

"Does he like... Give you privacy? Is he all nosy? Does he take you shopping? You know, what's he like?"

"He's nosy when he needs to be, I guess. Like every time we go shopping - we've been going every other weekend or so - he always has to ask, 'An, do you have enough underwear? An, do you need some new outfits? An, how about some shoes? An, maybe some CDs?'"

Megumi sat up a little, holding herself up by the elbows. "Are you serious? I wish my old man was like that! I always have to ask him for stuff but even then he's all like, 'What do you need that for? How much is that? Don't you have another pair just like that?' UGH, it's annoying."

"It sounds nice, sure, but..."

Mariko looked up from the fish with a knowing smile. "It gets overbearing sometimes, being... mothered like that."

"Exactly! He's nice and everything but he worries too much."

Megumi would simply not be dissuaded. Sighing deeply, she just plopped herself back down and pouted her lower lip out at the swaying leaves above. "That's how you know they love you."

_That's right_, An thought. _Dad never did any of those things..._ The years after her mother died had been hard on both of them. She knew, though, that she was lucky: rather that she experience a tragedy when she was young and hopeful... But even then, the ever-pressing question of "why?" was a source of torment. Her father...

"It's a shame Sora couldn't make it," Mariko said thoughtfully. "Akiko-san and Isshin-san might have started fights, though..."

"Baah, good riddance. I bet he's just as annoying out here as he is in there," snorted Megumi.

"That may be the case, but isn't it a little weird that he would just... disappear like that? After finally getting what he wanted..."

Friendship. Sora had a strange way of showing it but it looked like all he was really after, in regards to Tsukasa, was... friendship. An frowned, tracing circles into the water. Fish scattered indignantly, silently voicing their irritation with the swish of brilliant colored scales. The fact that he had been there worried her greatly... How could he have known what was there? And then distracting "Mother" like that... An knew first hand that she did not like being defied. Involuntarily, she shivered. "Hey... I don't suppose that maybe... She did something to him?"

That caught their attention. Even Megumi, who was twirling a freshly plucked blade of grass between her fingers, sat up all the way and looked hard at An. "You mean like...?"

An nodded. "I... don't really remember how I got stuck in the first place... But She was there from the start. She must have had something to do with it..."

"There was something I noticed when I was going to meet you," said Mariko. "We were walking to the hospital and an ambulance went by... It was going away from the hospital. And just as we were getting close to the front gates that same ambulance passed us again and pulled into the drop-off area. That was just a little while after the Net Slum incident..."

"As I was leaving, an ambulance came in. They were pulling in a gurney... A whole bunch of nurses and doctors were rushing it along, I guessed because it was a little boy on it..."

The three girls looked at each other uneasily, every one feeling the thickening dread wrapping about their hearts. It didn't make sense, but it made perfect sense: a path of logic outright rejected by hopeful hearts. Megumi was shaking her head, disbelieving but feeling something there that strung everything together. "That couldn't be..."

Mariko took An's hand and pointed towards the house with urgency. "We should tell Sakuma-san. If that is Sora..."

"Then we owe it to him to help," An nodded. A familiar determination filled her words, the same tone she used that day when they found Aura. "Since the possibility exists, we have to make sure."

Megumi rolled to her feet and slid open the patio door. "Then I guess we gotta go, and hope that it's some weird coincidence...."

-------------  
**[[ _Edited 12-9-03: spelling, grammar. Might have missed some. :/_**

*yakiniku = grilled meat, literally. :o yummy stuff. toss some veggies in there and you've got good eatin'.  
*kimchee = Korean... stuff. usually smells kinda funny, at least the kimchee that my mother adores. :(  
*ittadakimasu = basically, 'let's eat!' :) something along those lines anyway. ]] 


	3. Spiral

**[[ _I'll try to cut down on the yammering this chapter. One reason that chapter 2 took so long, I think, was because I have this annoying habit of trying to write way to much. :/ Picking up on the habits of some of my lesser-liked authors: I cannot read Stephen King because of that (much to my Travis' horror; sorry, babe). Things will start picking up here, so thank you for being so patient with me!_ ]]**

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**[ Chapter 3 : Spiral ]**

They were dumbfounded, completely. The trio of girls, An, Mariko, And Megumi, roamed back indoors and took up places in the living room just as Shinichiro was finishing up some story involving coffee makers and short skirts. Whatever mirth they knew then was quickly forgotten as An explained what they were thinking. "That's..."

"Possible," Mariko stated sternly. "Have you already forgotten what happened with An? No one thought what she was going through was possible. Know that we know what can happen, is it wise to ignore what might be another case? One that we might be able to help with?"

Kazuhiro sighed. "She's right. If I hadn't gone on a hunch myself, I probably never would have found An. Maybe the boy is Sora, maybe it isn't; either way, it wouldn't hurt to take a look. If they're right, the more harm might come from us not doing anything."

Unease snaked its way around the room. Having someone that they knew, be it in complete and utter disdain, fall prey to whatever it was that had knocked so many others into comas was unsettling enough. When the fallen might be a young boy... Shinichiro fidgeted with the arm of the couch. "Looks like we'll be taking a field trip, then?"

Isshin scooted up to his feet, digging keys out from his pocket. "Good thing I drove... That old van'll be of some use after all."

The group walked out of the house just as they had entered, filed one by one through the narrow front door. Parked on the curb was an obscenely boxy van stained a shade or two off white. It was trimmed off with black plastic, which did little to add any sort of style to it. It was, simply put... a van. When he got a number of faintly horrified looks, he shrugged and numbly stuck the keys in to unlock the doors. "It was practically a steal! Plus she's got A/C and a radio, that's all I really need in a car."

"So in other words, you're cheap," teased Megumi. She hauled open the side door with some help from An, and climbed into the back. Suddenly she jumped, staring hard at the floor. "Yuck, what is this!" she yelped. "Everything's so... clean!"

Kazuhiro and Shinichiro helped Mariko into a seat near the middle of the vehicle, and folded up her wheelchair to set it beside her. Akiko took up the passenger's side seat and immediately began commandeering the radio, despite Isshin's grouchy protests. Once everyone was settled in and all buckled up*, he started the behemoth up and lurched on down the street.

Everyone kept relatively quiet. Kazuhiro instructed Isshin on where to turn and such, while the girls in the back chatted quietly among themselves. It took but ten minutes through roads filled with imaginary traffic to make it to a well kept looking hospital that stood stark white against the valley that the city was nestled in. The parking wasn't as hectic as it should have been, something Shinichiro could not help but marvel at because of his familiarity with hectic big city life. An regarded the place with solemn familiarity as they found a spot near the entrance and headed for the receptionist's desk.

The receptionist looked extremely surprised to see a group come in at once, even if the said group numbered only seven. She nudged her glasses up along the bridge of her nose with the eraser end of a pencil and smiled sweetly at Kazuhiro, who took up the lead. "Good afternoon, sir, how may I help you?"

"Ahh, we're here to meet a patient who I believe was brought in a few months prior to today... I'm afraid I can't tell you what his name is, I can tell you what he's in for."

Sluggishly she regarded each of the faces gathered behind Kazuhiro; the thoughts that went through her mind were almost visible as wrinkles inching their way up a furrowed brow. "So you don't know who it is you're here to meet...?"

"That's the way it's looking. Well, not really... We've met him before. It's a long story."

The receptionist finally took a long look at An, pointing her out with her pencil. "I remember you... Are you doing ok? Everyone was so worried, all the nurses especially. They said they were watching over an angel."

Pink took hold of An's cheeks, but she bowed politely to the woman. "Yes, I'm doing wonderful now thanks to everyone... But I'm not so sure about this boy. From what I understand, he's in a condition just like mine."

It was as if all the others had disappeared. The receptionist dug through the shelf of a file cabinet, plucked out a single file, and looked over the contents. Over the counter, An could see a picture of a young boy with sharp eyes. "Yes, yes... A coma. No sign of recovery, but no sign of anything else for that matter. His mother's been worried sick, literally... She's taken up the room next to her boy." She flipped a page and blinked in surprise. "Looks like he got the room you were in... All the intensive care stuff was still in there so they decided to stick him in."

"Do you think we could...?" An asked hesitantly. Much to her relief, the receptionist smiled warmly at her, and finally to her friends.

"You remember the way, right? Up on the third floor, fifth door on the left down that far left hall. I'm sure having some visitors might do some good, even if we can't see it..."

An bowed again graciously, and led the group on towards the elevator. It was a relatively small hospital so the elevators were also relatively small, to the point to where it took two turns up and down to get everyone onto the third floor. The hallways were practically empty. From time to time a nurse would move from one room to another, and empty gurneys would be taken down to the lower levels, but for the most part there was little there but the sounds of their footsteps and the faint humming of air conditioning. Dreadfully sterile.

They walked down to the appropriate hallway and to the appropriate door. An paused in front of it to examine the name scrawled on a tag in a framed slip on the wall: Hiroshi Yanaka. Then, quietly, she gave the knob a turn and pushed the door open.

The very first thing that hit them all, even before the pale lights from the ceiling fixtures and the window that looked out across a small courtyard trimmed with pink, was the smell. It was not anything noxious or even all that disgusting, it was simply a wall of odor that rushed out to invade the air in the hallway. The smell of medicines and disinfectants, rubber and plastic. An didn't seem to notice it.

It was a small room dominated chiefly by a small bed, the head-end of which was encircled partly by a number of machines and monitors that hooked themselves up to the pale figure beneath the sheets. It was as somber as a funeral procession, a saddened family gathering around an open casket not quite knowing why they are sad. There in the bed was a boy with the complexion of a corpse: his skin was lightly tanned but it had been drained of almost all color, degrading into a faint gray hue. Green hair stuck against his forehead with the remnants of sweat long since evaporated. The face was unmistakable, from the arch in his nose and the curve of his cheeks, his own special brand of boyish charm. Sora lay before them.

-------

"Once upon a time there was a blademaster who was kind of heart, whose soul was forged with justice and good will towards his fellow players. He, along with another blademaster, conquered the One Sin and became known as the greatest warriors in all The World. One day, he took a friend out on his first adventure. The end."

"... No, not quite the end. I'm still here, aren't I?"

It might have been mistaken for a shift in lighting if there was any light there to be concerned with. The staff floated in the graying landscape that was once Morganna's. A band of violet, arched like lightning, darted from point to point. "True, yes," it said in the language that could not be heard, seen, or read, but simply felt by those who knew how. "But that is beside the point. You are not here as well."

"Well how about this... Once upon a time there was a twin blade who talked too much. One day he said the wrong things to the wrong person, and that person became very, very upset at him. And on yet another day, he grew a spine and stood up for his friends. The end."

"Another fallacy. You are not very bright for a Descendant of Fianna."

"It's just a title in a game."

A subdued flicker of green and white lurked through the curves and sharp edges of the staff, trying its best to ignore the violet streaks that danced mindlessly throughout their "home." Only a matter of weeks had passed since the one called Orca was defeated by Skeith, and an even shorter amount of time since the one called Kite had defeated it. It still lurked the empty areas of _The World_, perhaps as a reminder of what could be. But to them, it was little more than a prison in which they had been forced together. They did not find this agreeable in the slightest.

Thankfully enough it was made at least somewhat tolerable, in an extremely loose sense of the word.

"I don't understand this," said Orca for what must have been the millionth time. In actuality it was only the third, but Sora remembered liking exaggeration when it was appropriate, or inappropriate as the case may be. "Kite beat it - you saw it! - but we're still here... He'll get us out soon. He's got the bracelet..."

"He's bound to fail. Running into disaster like that... His good luck has to run out sooner or later."

"Just like yours did?"

Sora fumed silently. "I did not go looking for it. _He_ is. When he dies, I will savor being one to say, 'I told you so.'"

"Just as I will when he frees us."

"You are also rather level-headed for an elite character," Sora remarked, not sure if he was trying to find a nerve or not. "It's rare for one such as you to have so much faith in a newbie character."

"There's nothing elite about me. Plus Kite's my friend... He'll help out, I know it. He's got the bracelet."

"As if that means anything. I found the Key but look what it got me."

Mass and space was a purely relative matter. Outside the staff there was space; a plethora all around which is perceived as such simply because the staff took up very little space in comparison to the total amount that it could have taken up. It was a most curious misconception because in reality, they were both more or less equal in size to the point of having what difference there was be completely negligible. Likewise, the space within the staff, rather than of the staff itself, conformed to the equality of size even though it most definitely should not by all means: the staff was not designed hollow.

Sora often fancied himself to be lying on the bottom side of the circular shape that intersected the cross, often with his hands behind his head as if watching for stars. There were none, of course, but the mere act made the fact seem inconsequential.

Orca was usually leaning against the curve on the opposite side of the staff, keeping as far away from the former player killer without resulting to scaling up to the very top of the staff. "Be ignorant if you like," he said, shaking his head in aggravation. "I know he will accomplish something."

Pointedly Sora ignored him. There were other things to think about besides Orca's hopelessness: the thing that bound them was not without flaws. Sora was not only staring up into the bluish black void but into the very essence of the staff itself. He had noticed it a while after he had been taken in; inside there was no sense of space, only the curves of an infinite horizon, and something more. Little by little he had learned to pick out traces of symbols flying through the endless sky, not only their existence but also their meaning... It was only a matter of time until their shortcomings would reveal themselves to him. Every lock had a key.

Several days prior (days being yet another relative term) he had found the crack. It rarely showed itself to him: code was like water, forever flowing as long as it was given the momentum to do so. As the moon circled the earth, the crack circled him. Orca had not noticed it, but he had noticed nothing at all to begin with. It was a miniscule thing wrought from a single fragment of redundant code. Its very existence baffled and intrigued Sora; it was his understanding that this, the staff, was meant to be a tomb for stolen souls. If it was possible to escape, its existence would be useless, a mere waste of effort and process. Not the workings of an AI, or any other machine whose actions were governed by solid logic. It showed itself again now, as it did every so often, flickering brighter than the surrounding bits of code. Down the wall it crept like water from a leaky roof. It was near Orca, sliding down towards his right shoulder...

Sora watched it intently and rose to approach it. The blademaster watched him wearily, increasingly so when he realized that _he_ was not the target of Sora's attention. "What...?"

Sora's hands pressed against the invisible wall. It would be useless to try and rip it open physically, if only because the idea of physical force was laughable in the data stream. Thoughts piled up behind his eyes.

"What are you looking at?" grunted a confused Orca. He was staring at the wall too and saw nothing but the absolute nothing.

"The way out. And it's not on some fancy bracelet."

"What are you talking about? There's nothing there."

"So _who's_ the ignorant one?"

Orca glowered. "Maybe 'ignorant' wasn't the right word. How about 'insane?'"

Useless talking. Inch by inch the crack crawled, always just beyond Sora's fingertips. He clawed at it but it would not come to him, would not open. "Shut up and help me."

"With what? There's -"

Sora's hands turned into fists and slammed a single time hard against the wall, but then again they didn't: he felt no pressure, heard no noise, doomed to halt seemingly against the emptiness. "Do you have any idea how long I've been in here?" he asked, his voice suddenly very soft and quiet.

Orca hesitated; when people went all quiet like that, it was usually bad news. At once he looked uncertain, and he shook his head with great unease.

"Neither do I. Maybe it's only been a few days, maybe it's been a few years. I don't want to be here. I never wanted to be here, I never asked to..." He didn't take his eyes off the crack but he could see Orca frown and fidget. "And I am not going to sit and wait for anyone to come and find me. He's not coming. He's forgotten."

"Who has?"

Sora did not answer. Time had passed, of course it had - Time did not stand by for mortals, even when they were not in the most mortal form. Patience was a virtue but even it had limits. Even the crack, glowing brightly among the softer whites of code that wrapped around it like broken wings, would not wait for him to break it open. As it slid further and further down, he did as well, ending up on his knees when it faded into the darkness. Lost again.

"You haven't done anything," he said.

Orca, once again, hesitated. "What is there to do? We're trapped."

The twin blade rose to his feet slowly, movements smooth as velvet. When he turned, his gaze was fire, smoldering within the confines of irises that barely kept them in check. "We're as trapped as long as you think we will be. There is a way out, there has to be! As long as you're content to just sit and rot, though, that's what we'll do."

"Do you think I want to be here?" Orca snarled, returning a glare infused with a sudden sprout of rage. "Do you think I haven't been thinking of a way to try and get out? Sure, there has to be a way out, but I'm not seeing it, and I'm not about to go crazy trying to. If we think this through logically we'll find something."

A heavy sigh heaved Sora's shoulders. "Logic. Ok, I can do that. Number one, we're being held in staff whose owner, number two, has been destroyed rendering, number three, the staff inactive and immobile as far as we know."

"And you were saying that you saw some way out...?"

"Yes," said Sora. His hand brushed against the wall, pointing out the path it had last taken. "I guess... I've been able to pick up on things, the general make-up of The World... Like right now, you look sort of like a blob of code to me, but I can still see you as you're supposed to look." Sora blinked then, and chuckled as he shook his head slowly. "It _does_ sound like I'm going insane, doesn't it?"

"It does," agreed Orca, allowing some of his anger to melt away. "But that's probably more of a benefit than a hindrance. Can you do anything with it?"

A 1, a 0, a string shuffled, repeated, shuffled, repeated as it was needed. Within the jumble was a stray fragment, just like the crack but slightly different. This one wasn't as glaring an error, yet it was vibrant enough to be picked up by Sora's watchful eyes. He reached for it, knowing well that he could not touch it, and focused in on it, knowing it was all that mattered. If he could just get his mind around it...

While he strained, Orca seemed to catch onto what it was he had looked upon. He scrunched his brow and came closer, nearly pressing his face against the wall that bound them. "Hey, what is that...?"

Sora may not have known it but it was what he did: streaming energy into what he saw to bring it to light, pulling that which was obscure into visibility. When he looked at Orca it was lost, and he felt as if something had been physically wretched off him - a disconnection that made him gasp for breath, and shake his head to clear it away of a fuzziness that overtook him. Orca too lost sight of it, for he squinted at the emptiness in which there was a brief presence of blurred gentle white. "You saw it?"

"I saw _something_."

He grew bolder. Another snatch of code, randomly blended in to its neighboring strings... Little by little he wrapped his knowing consciousness around it and pulled, gently at first. Beside him he heard Orca mumble, "And there's something else." Sora muttered through clenched teeth, "Concentrate on it." He could feel the fragment separate bit by bit from the surrounding code, gently eased away from where it was meant to be. Then finally it was free; they heard a deep crackle, like cans being trampled, and they both were flung back. There was nothing left to pull. When they sat up, they saw what looked like a sharp convex dent in the wall where the fragment had been.

Orca rubbed a palm against his forehead. "Did... we just do that?"

"I think we did." Sora was quick to return to his feet, for now he had a renewed purpose: if they could do that, as insignificant as it might have been... "Looks like we've got hope after all. Come on, we have to find it. I think we can break it open if we try hard enough."

He started to walk. Within the staff there was no true up or down, left or right: it all blurred into a single plane with ambiguous boundaries. But if his position could have been pinpointed from the outside, one would have seen him walking up the side of the staff, following the curve of the circular portion. Orca trailed behind, still trying to harness the ability to see beyond what was there with little success.

"There!" he heard Sora cry from somewhere head. Sora was kneeling and staring down (wherever down was; technically, he was staring out) at something. When Orca came close enough he could see a white ripple that was just barely translucent enough to be seen. "Hurry! This is it!"

It looked very much like a tear in fabric with crystalline shapes hanging about its ragged edges. Through it he could see blackness but it was a blackness without numbers: outside, perhaps? That alone was enough to send him on his knees beside Sora and to try manipulating it as they had the fragment before. This one was slippery, difficult to grasp. The strain on Sora's face was evident and Orca was almost convinced that he could smell perspiration, yet the crack did not seem do budge.

"It's... not going to move," grunted Orca. "Not _in_, anyway..."

"Then try pushing out," Sora grunted back. Their minds became battering rams, slamming against a door that refused to be open. First Sora pushed, then Orca did, taking on a frantic rhythm that was quickly rewarded: they felt it give away ever so slightly, but that was enough to give them strength. "It's working!"

Their efforts doubled in an instant. Soon the difference became noticeable, palpable; the space around the opening began to shy away at their force, shrinking further out and taking their door with it. Shape held no meaning: Orca no longer looked as Orca did, Sora no longer looked as Sora did. Everything was a blur of light and dark, and they were rushing out for the night.

The system is a finite thing, it must be: only so much can exist within a given area, just as a balloon can only contain so much gas. If so much data were to be forced through... No longer was it a matter of opening the door as it was a matter of simply breaking through it... So he pushed. He pushed with all the might he could muster; surely a high concentration of data trying to spill through a defined exit point would force it to open, surely...

Tearing, something was tearing, being ripped apart. Orca was yelling something but Sora could not hear over an explosion of crackling, a world around them being shredded away. Except it wasn't anything around them, and Orca wasn't simply yelling.

There was a barrier of some sort: his efforts were pulled to a halt, but that did not deter him: he pushed even harder, holding fast to the idea that his freedom was at hand. The crackling intensified into separate distinct noises, deafening crashes and booms. He became aware of the hot blue bolts that were dancing across him, pouring in from the tear, aware of lines of pain they drew upon him. Orca was screaming and his voice, thick with pain and terror, became garbled and subhuman. The mass heaved forth one final time until it moved no longer. The static disappeared, and where once there was chaotic noise there was silence. Sora was still pressed against it when he realized that it was no longer what it used to be. The area around the crack had taken on a greenish tinge, the crack itself was filled with a charred black mass. Ash was spread all around him, covering the place in a thin-splotched sheet.

Orca was gone.

--------

The ECG was going crazy. On the floor the remnants of a broken vase tangled up with the stems of lilacs, the most recent gift from a family member who had stopped by minutes earlier. The body on the bed was supposed to be still and peaceful, but this was nothing of the sort. The nurse could see the eyes rolling about beneath the eyelids, and she most certainly could see how heavily he was breathing. Never mind the seizures that racked his body: his arms flailed, hands clutched sheets until the knuckles where snowy white. She was pushing the page button on a small strip that hung beside the head of the bed but no one had come, but it had only been seconds. Seconds felt like an eternity that fluttered past with the bat of eyelashes.

The young man sucked in his last breath and expelled it as he sank back onto the mattress. His eyes snapped open and stared balefully at the ceiling, blind and gray and scared. The monitor had already flat lined.

--------

He was moving, barely. Small hands grasped at things no one could see. The blips on the machines all seemed to have decided to speed up but the increase was barely noticeable: nothing more than numbers rising higher on the scale than they had previously been. Something was happening, that much was evident.

Throughout their room there was a heavy sense of disassociation. Life, or the essence of it, was primarily absent: machinations pumped fluids in and pulled fluids out, and did the same for oxygen. Without them, the child would die and yet no one knew why or how. Games were never meant to steal lives.

A chair sat beside the bed that smelled of sweat and tears. Beside one of its legs was a box of tissues toppled over on its side, and against the wall was a small trash bin half full of crumpled white fluffs. An sat there with her hands folded in her lap, just watching over Hiroshi's face. Reading the intricacies of a rise in his brow, a twitch of his lip.

"I wonder what he's doing in there," Megumi thought aloud. A small couch sat beside a window, recently moved in by the nurses. They said it was for Hiroshi's mother but they had not even seen any signs of her. "Maybe he's wandering around The World like you were..."

"He must be scared," Akiko said. She had raven's eyes, curiously blank yet eerily knowing of everything that had occurred and has yet to occur around her. They stared at one of Hiroshi's twitching hands, at the junction where artificial veins intruded into those within him. "Must be horrible where the only thing you can't do is get out."

"He is. It is," spoke An. "You can take in everything The World has to offer and some more, but you can never leave... We have to get him out."

Kazuhiro nudged his glasses further up on his nose, and one could swear that they saw thoughts coagulate within his eyes. "Is it even possible? Yours was a special case, An. You were tied to Aura. She's awake now, isn't she? Maybe Sora doesn't have a key of his own."

"What about that monster?" Eyes turned to Isshin, who was leaned up against a corner of the room. "I got the impression that that was an abnormality in the system, sort of like Aura. What if we found the monster and defeated it?"

"We'd be a little late for that," said Shinichiro. "People posted stuff on the BBS about that monster but from what I understand, it's already been taken care of. Nobody's seen it or any signs of it for a good while now."

"There's always a way. I can't let him stay in there by himself," An said, tearing her attention away from Hiroshi to scan over the others. "I want to go back into The World and find him. There has to be a way to help."

"Then I guess me and Isshin-kun will be right back," Shinichiro detached himself from the wall near the door where he had been standing, gesturing for Isshin to follow him. "Gonna need your keys." The two walked out from the room and headed towards the elevator.

"Where are they going?" asked Megumi.

Mariko pulled herself up beside the window. It overlooked the front parking lot, and it was easy to spot Isshin's van out from the sparse population of considerably smaller (and much more attractive) vehicles. "Shinichiro-san has work later today... I think Isshin-san agreed to drop him off there, so Shinichiro-san brought his briefcase with him..."

"Dragging a laptop around, no doubt," snickered Akiko. "Shouldn't be a surprise if he has The World installed on there. Looks like you'll be able to plug right in, An."

The two men returned shortly with a suitcase and another smaller bag. There was a small table set aside beside the chair An sat in, and in a matter of minutes it was occupied with a sleek looking laptop and a headset. Shinichiro looked rather proud of the little machine. "Good thing I went for the high-end stuff, huh? Fun times on those long boring business trips."

"Aww man, how morbid is this?" Megumi was grumbling, moving to keep a lookout at the room's door. "The nurse is gonna flip if she sees a bunch of weirdoes playing a game in a coma patient's room..."

Kazuhiro set a hand on An's shoulder, warily eyeing the laptop. The ALTIMIT OS desktop was already loaded and the icon for _The World_ spun invitingly on the screen. "Be careful in there, An-chan... Don't take any unnecessary risks."

She looked up at him and for the second that their eyes met there was recognition: a father knew the risks a daughter was undertaking, and a daughter knew she had a father who cared. An smiled at her guardian, nodding before she set the headset into place. "Wish me luck."

--------

Mac Anu was just as he* remembered, pastel and beautiful beneath a gentle sun. There was a little bit of regret in that he could not longer there for long: there was a soul to be found and he knew it would not be there in the root town.

Once the door had been unlocked it could be opened at any time. The way to "Mother's" domain had no keywords, not in the conventional sense. It was all a matter of reaching out to the Chaos Gate and _remembering_; fear, sickness, the wasting away of something that could have, at one point or another, been considered alive. Tsukasa remembered that place, and then he was there.

It, however, had changed. All of the color from the surrounding scenery had been drained into monochrome grays and blacks, and the very nature of the place felt different. The horizon was empty and flat. From the ground rose two walls tall enough to be from a standard house, and they joined at one corner to strengthen that illusion. There was wallpaper on the interior side with the wisps of coiled brushstrokes belonging to a dreamy painter scattered across it. Against one wall sat a desk, and against the other was a bed. Over the desk was a window but through it was the deepest shade of matte black he had ever seen. Both the bed and the desk were empty, as was the rest of the domain as far as he knew. He walked to the desk and touched it, brushing his fingertips against a material that did not feel like wood at all, and he noticed that one of the drawers was open by just a crack. When he moved to open it, he was stopped by a voice coming from behind his shoulder.

"Tsukasa-kun," it said with an almost dream-like quality to it; a voice he could not hear in the sense of having an actual solid voice behind it, but he still acknowledged its presence.

Tsukasa turned around and was faced with what very well may have been a ghost. It had no true shape or substance, but it had pale translucent numbers and symbols encircling it, permeating it like mobile tattoos. It must have recognized the look of confusion on Tsukasa's face, for it bobbed once in what was suggested, by a phantom whisper, to be an apology. The marks brightened and circled around faster and faster until it looked like a shred of white that had gotten lost in the land of gray. Little by little the shape became more human, and much more familiar. The bulges at the shoulder and hips, as well as lengthy bangs and bandanna tails... Then the white disappeared, and the avatar Sora wore took on faded shades of the colors he once possessed. "Is this better?"

Initially relief washed over Tsukasa, but it was a notion short-lived given the situation: either this was not Sora at all, or something very bad had happened. "Sora...? Have you been here all this time?"

Sora shrugged and grinned crudely; apparently he thought little of what was going on, if anything was going on at all. "Off and on. I've been around."

It seemed at first that Sora was much taller than he had been when Tsukasa met him face to face for the first time, but he quickly realized that Sora's feet weren't touching the ground. "We were all getting worried... For a while we thought that maybe you just stopped playing, but then we heard-"

"Worried?" Sora echoed, sounding strangely hollow. "You were worried about me?"

"Well yeah, why wouldn't I be?" 

"You've been gone for so long..."

"Yeah... I'm really sorry about that. Things have been kind of hectic... I moved in with Bear, you know. And getting into a new school, adjusting to everything... I suppose I haven't had a lot of time to log on anymore."

Sora's eyes softened, dropping away from the wavemaster's face to stare somewhere behind him. "You forgot your promise."

"Promise?"

"We were going to be friends."

Tsukasa thought he could hear sadness in Sora's voice. filtered through a quiet matter-of-factness. He nodded after some thought, recalling traces of memory: they had spoken of friendship the day he was freed. "I really would like to be your friend. I'd like to help you too, just like you helped me."

"I don't need your help. I'm already out."

Surprise and confusion. Tsukasa cocked his head to the side. "Out?"

Sora didn't seem to hear Tsukasa's question. His eyes dimmed just noticeably, still refusing to settle upon the wavemaster's form. "You're a little late now. How long has it been? I can't tell anymore."

"Why don't you go back?"

"Go back?"

"To the real world, I mean. If you're out...?"

The green-haired youth chanced a look at Tsukasa, and was met with frightful eyes. He saw concern there, glassed over and crystallized into violet. "Because... I don't want to."

"Sora, can you feel this?"

"Feel what?"

"I'm holding your hand."

Stares. Lies? Sora couldn't tell. Tsukasa's face said nothing that hadn't already been said no matter how hard he tried to read it. "No you're not," he said, though he was not sure if he could believe himself.

"Everybody is here with you," said Tsukasa. "We met up at Bear's... Kazuhiro-san's. We ate lunch and we talked and we wondered what happened to Sora and why we couldn't get in touch with him." The figure before him drooped slightly, disbelieving; confusion overtook his features and his lips mouthed soundless 'no's. "And then we found you here. This used to be my room, my bed, my medicines and my needles.... We want to help you, Sora. _Hiroshi_."

(Recognition of a name: syllables and symbols attached to a body, a body that lies too still to be alive but not still enough to be dead. Hiroshi Yanaka gasps.)

"You wanted to be friends, right? Let's be friends in the real world. You can come over and we can hang out-"

"I can't go back." A shred of strength and defiance glistens cold in his eyes, hidden away in the sudden surge of fear. "I killed him. They'll get me and they'll kill _me_."

That was not what Tsukasa thought he was going to say. He watched Sora, speechless for many long moments until finally he coaxed a quiet, "What?" through his throat.

"Orca. Yasuhiko. She caught him and I killed him. He's not there anymore, I can't feel him." Lost again. His focus fell away from Tsukasa, dwindling up to the ceiling. "I can't feel him there or anywhere else."

Tsukasa looked up too and saw it: a black smear that could have been liquid at one point in time. It could be seen around the light fixture that hung there, spreading out like water from a leaky roof except it was matte with flecks of silvery splinters scattered throughout. That... couldn't have been what he thought it was. Literally killing someone through the game? He could feel his pulse thudding in his ears. "We can talk about that after-"

"No." When Tsukasa tore his eyes away from the ceiling Sora's were waiting to grab hold, the dark wine-pools that for the first time ever made him think of blood. "You know. You saw it fit to leave me here, I don't think you'll mind turning me in."

"Hiroshi, _please_-"

Sora stepped closer, his hands snapping around Tsukasa's wrists. Out of reflex Tsukasa tried to back away, twisting his arms to try and wiggle out of his grasp but it was no use: iron hands clenched tight, and the wavemaster was only tugged closer. The fear had drained out of Sora's face, replaced by a calm that in itself was more frightening than Tsukasa could have ever imagined. The comforts of knowing something that your company did not... He smiled, speaking in a soft voice. "You'll keep your promise all right. I'll keep mine, too. Hold still."

One of his hands was released but before he could try and break away again he felt something cold and sharp pressed against his throat. A chill ran throughout his body, numbing every extremity, and he heard/felt/saw the harsh crackle of static eating away at his vision. Sora was there until the black swept in, smile bleak as bones.

--------

An jolts upright, tossing her head back to stare at the line where the wall met the ceiling. In an instant all is silent and all is noisy once more, a half dozen uncertain voices speaking out to one who could not hear them. The girl at her side squeezes her hand, praying for a response. Blood trickles from an unseen wound on An's throat. Then she begins to slip and fall, tipping to the side in slow motion. She hits the floor before anyone realizes what is happening, before her guardian can reach down and catch her. They hear the impact of a lifeless body on linoleum, and then they know: An Shouji might not get back up.

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**[[ _Edit 12-9-03: more spelling, grammar, etc.  
* seat belts are pretty awesome :) (the group, too; go cowboy bebop!)  
* yes, I know the truth behind Tsukasa, but since Tsukasa IS a male character in the game, I shall refer him to male_ ]] **


	4. End of Night

**[[_ Finally. A million thanks to everyone who's supported this... Trelane22, you made my day when your review popped into my inbox. Witticism, always a pleasure, and same with Crystal17 (as always) and everyone else._**

At the moment I am on a computer at my university's library and for whatever reason it doesn't have Word on it... I'm not the best at spelling and grammar but I'll check and fix it up when I get home a little later. One more final exam today, wahoo! :/ Anyway, you all enjoy. Been a pleasure writing this. Ode to the House (teehee!).]]

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**[ Chapter 4: End of Night ]**

The black behind eyelids hide many things. If he had fallen asleep, he had no recollection of it: above black, beneath black, all around… black. Beneath his hands he felt something soft, that realization spreading out to his back, as well as the whole of his body. Fingers groped about, feeling the slight tucks and folds of sheets and blankets far too crisp to have been worn in, but their presence was still comforting. He wondered what time it was before opening his eyes.

The stain still hung on the ceiling. Recollection rushed into his mind: he wasn't home, the place that held him was not real. The bed was just a complex illusion, a mirror image of the real world that looked right until you took the details into consideration.

Tsukasa bolted upright as if waking from a nightmare, a notion that didn't strike him as too far from the truth. Around him was a room; Sora's room, he remembered. It had all four walls now, closed in from the bleakness that was Morganna's domain once before. Everything looked as it did when he last saw it: a desk still slumped against a wall, dejected and unused… or almost unused. The drawer that had been only slightly open before had been pulled clear out of the desk, and it sat on the mock-carpeted floor. Tsukasa rose from the bed on wobbly legs, and peeked inside. Shards of glass glinted up at him, tiny specks of stardust.

A breeze tickled at him, licking at his drab Wavemaster attire. Upon one of the new walls was a door. A closed, Tsukasa presumed, but it had been left partially open. Cautiously he approached it and pulled it open all the way, taking note of the painful chill the metal of the doorknob sent into his fingers.

It was not a closet door in the truest sense after all. What should have been a small enclosed space stretched out into a hallway of questionable length. The walls were all matte black, coated with the same ashen substance that the stain upon the ceiling was made of. The breeze picked up, billowing out into the room like invisible frosted smoke. Along with it came faint sounds: a voice, sing-song, distorted by echoes.

"Sora?" he calls out. No response comes, no interruption to the indistinct mumbles that snaked through the hallway.

Tsukasa crossed his arms tight, bracing himself for the chill, and began to walk. His feet made no sound, and the pale light that dared dwindle into the hall didn't get far before being consumed by the darkness. Only whispers and the flicker of some stray speck lingered there, the voice growing louder as he ventured deeper in, the lights becoming harder to spot. Somewhere ahead a sphere of warm orange comes into view, and the hallway opens up into a great hall of sorts: a huge expanse of room that, as the hall did, stretched out beyond his range of view. Near the opening was a lantern tipped onto its side. Oil had pooled beneath it and the flame within floated on air, perilously close to the liquid that never caught fire. The voice silences itself when Tsukasa steps into the small halo of light it casts.

At the edge of the ring something sparkled. It was a picture frame half swallowed by shadow, with a few chips of glass scattered nearby. 

"Tsukasa-kun," called the voice. Sora's. It came from all around him, from the deepest expanses of the giant room, from right beside his ears.

"My name is An."

"Tsukasa-kun," it echoed, more forcefully. Tsukasa thought he saw coils of smoke swirling beside the picture frame, apparitions that disappeared as soon as he walked beside the fallen item and picked it up.

"Hiroshi," he said.

"My name is Sora."

The frame in his hands was plain, elegant in its simplicity. Light colored fine-grained wood carved into simple arches and straight lines wrapped about a picture of three people. A family, Tsukasa-presumed, certain even with the presence of the frame's greatest flaw. A shorter person, a child, was flanked on both sides by two individuals… A mother and a father, who knelt by their son who wore his sober school uniform like it was a size too big for him. His face was hidden away within a nest of cracks: it looked as if someone had smashed a hammer into it right where Hiroshi's face would have been. Subsequent cracks and faults lanced out in all directions, two of which went on to cross over each parent's throat, severing the heads at their necks. Their faces had disappeared, eaten away by smears of greasy white.

"What happened?" Tsukasa asked. A pale thumb brushed across the glass' face: jagged and all too real.

Something moved at the edges of his eyes, or so he thought, but it was near impossible to be certain. He knew that he felt something dry whisk across his shoulders. "Nothing. Always nothing. Left to my own devices, I… grew."

"She's done something horrible."

"Who?"

"Mother." No, that wasn't right; it never had been. Tsukasa shook his head and reiterated, "The woman's voice. We met her before."

Again something light touched his shoulders, tips of invisible fingers crawling along the drab brown of his clothing. "It doesn't matter."

"But it does!" Tsukasa found himself saying much louder than he would have liked. When he spoke again he was quiet once more, eyes glued to the faceless trio in his hands. "You're not Sora anymore. Sora was strong and he never let anyone hold him down. She's keeping you here and you're just letting her."

"And who's keeping _you_ here?" snarls Sora. The touch moves from his shoulder to against his cheek, something feather-light and dreadfully cold. "I am stronger than I ever was before. Don't you see? I control reality here. _That_ is my strength. I shape things with my will, and my will is absolute."

"And what does that mean? This isn't reality, it's all illusion."

"Illusion, then, I control illusion. An even greater strength in that: to create that which is false but will be taken without question as truth and fact. Think of what I could do..."

The lantern still burned. It was the kind people took on camping trips, tall and cylindrical with a round flat cone top. There was no fuel within it but the flame didn't mind: it still hovered within the glass body, the wick unscathed as well as untouched. Then he began to walk, frame in one hand and lantern in the other. The circle of light that was pulled along with him did not reveal much of what was ahead, if there was anything to begin with. Tsukasa walked anyway.

He was never alone, he knew. Always he would catch stray glimpses of something dark shifting, shred of grey amid the black, but nothing that sat still long enough for him to truly see. Minutes that felt stretched out into hours passed before Sora spoke again. "Where are you going, Tsukasa-kun?"

"To find Sora," said Tsukasa matter-of-factly.

"But you already have. I am here."

"No."

Abruptly something ahead moved. A wall rose up in front of her, followed by three more at her sides and back. She glanced up in time to catch a stray twinkle of crimson that quickly hid itself away. "You have changed, Tsukasa. I am not sure if I like who you are now."

"Ditto to you," he said humorlessly.

The twinkle returned, flashing brighter with irritation; they linger there long enough for Tsukasa to see that they are eyes indeed, almond-shaped ghosts that hung in pairs. As if hesitant, the structures changed again. The walls dropped out of sight, returning to the flat featureless floor with nothing but a single stray mark, any single detail, giving any hints of there having been any change.

He didn't have a chance to see Sora approach; Tsukasa simply blinked and the Twin Blade was there before him, his hip stuck out slightly to one side, a braced against it. He was watching Tsukasa, as always, silent and expressionless. That was how Tsukasa knew immediately that something else was wrong.

Sora's face was growing indistinct. Beige static jolted across his visage as if he were wearing a mask that was quickly losing its composition, an oval ring of fuzz marking out its loosening hold. Tsukasa cautiously reached out to Sora, shaky fingers stretched to brush upon Sora's cheek. He felt not a thing, and apparently neither did Sora: the fingertip found nothing solid to halt upon. It stuck straight through Sora's face, which immediately dissapeared; it had no reason to linger, since its single function had already been lost. Instead, Tsukasa found himself staring into nothing. It as as if someone had taken an ice cream scoop and dug out everything that constituted a human face and left in its wake a darkness that seemed to stretch far beyond the expanses of his skull. If he looked too deepy he could lose himself, Tsukasa knew."You've forgotten what what you look like...?"

"What I look like doesn't matter," said the faceless Sora. "You look like a boy but we all know that's not true. I don't need to think of appearances anymore."

The picture, he still had the picture. Quickly he set the lantern down and began picking away at the glass, ignoring the pricks of pain that flared through his fingertips. Glass fell, splintering, shattering. The face beneath it all was the same one that she saw lying on the bed but in the picture, he is smiling the smile of knowing that he is there in that moment, in that place, with the people who love him the most-

Sora barked out bitter laughter. "Love? _Love_?! More like tolerance. I'm the result of a careless night. They don't love me just as I don't love them."

"That's not true," said Tsukasa, trying not to feel revolted by Sora's words. He was so young but... "Your mother is in the next room. She's been worried sick about you, literally!"

"Then let her worry. Let her rot and fall apart for all I care," grumbled Sora with his arms crossed. Indignation personified.

"The nurse told me about her. She's been sitting in the chair I'm in now, watching you, holding your hand, praying that her son will wake up. How can you say something so horrible?"

He laughed again, deeper, louder. "Should I find gentler words to give to that woman? They would all mean the asme thing. Leave it to her to be brainless enough to interpret it all as flowers and sunshine." His head shook and a hand reached out to Tsukasa, beckoning. "She's irrelevant here, don't worry. Come on... Let's go have some fun!"

"I didn't come here for that," Tsukasa said flatly, ignoring thte offered hand. He was looking straight into the darkness within Sora's face, searching for signs of anything at all.

Flicker of red; Sora reluctantly withdrew his hand and turned around. "Suit yourself," he said as he retreated into the shadows. "If you don't want to, that's fine. You forget who has the power here. I intend to enjoy it."

A growl, a shift - mighty creaks rippled through the world around him and walls rose up, erratic and chipped and broken. This time there was no enclosure keeping him contained, at least not in the spot he was in. Tsukasa picked up the lantern and began walking, the path angling around incomplete walls and twisting hallways. _A maze...?_

Tsukasa remembered hearing about experiments scientists would do with rats, where a rat would be placed at the starting point and a piece of cheese or other treat would be placed at the end, and they would time how long it took for the rat to figure the way out. He never did understand what that proved: it seemed just a matter randomly picking out the correct turns to take. To him, the way seemed straight forward. The walls turned and turned, and he walked along side, trailing a hand against it; no extraneous pathways revealed themselves to him.

Something whispered at his ear, indistinct words that were gone just as soon as he realized he had heard them. He spun about, swinging the lantern, but nobody was there. Sora was toying with him. Another sound came from just ahead of him, the creak of a knife against wood, but again there was nothing to be seen. Illusions... Nothing more... right?

The Wavemaster took a breath and resumed walking. The noises did not cease: on occasion there was something crashing behind him, and many times he heard ghostly whispers (_ayaveyoo, ayaveyoo, ayaveyoo_) from all around him. More than once he caught sight of sharp silver glints just beyond the turn of a wall, and felt cold ragged breath upon his cheeks.

He cannot be afraid. Doggedly he pushes himself on, holding the light out infront of him, fixing his eyes on nothing but the path straight ahead... A turn takes him into a wider open area, a small section squared off to a size similar to the room he woke up in. There was no furniture there, but it was distinctly different from the rest of the black. On the floor there was an iridescent shape, a Q with an I laying directly on top of it, diving it into two incongruent halves. He shivered fiercely at the stifling sense of fear that seemed to emanate from the shape. He hardly took a step into the room when it hit him like like a foul odor that had been boxed up for too long.

Above the pierced Q floated a transparent avatar, one that Tsukasa would not have noticed if it were not for the bright white waves of energy that washed down it. It was small, perhaps the height of a child, but it took filled Tsukasa with panic. The thing looked like a stone golem, its body segmented off into rounded parts. Small eye like shapes were scattered on one side of what was probably its head, and clawed hands hung at its sides.

"You remember him, don't you?" something else whispers from directly behind Tsukasa. Sora's voice, he recognizes, quiet and grim. "Oh wait, I forgot... You never did get to meet him properly."

Tsukasa didn't bother glancing over his shoulder for he knew Sora wouldn't be there. "That monster... We saw it at the Net Slum. Helba did something before anyone attacked."

"I know. I was there."

A moment of uncertainty... Tsukasa blinked. "You were?"

"Your mommy dearest called that thing up on me right after you left. You see, there's this technique called Data Drain... It pulls apart and rewrites character data into something more... hmm, _proper_."

Pieces fit together. No wonder Sora was different now... Even when Tsukasa was under Morganna's hand he could only do so much. He couldn't manipulate his avatar as Sora did, much less the scenery...

"It took a lot of work but I figured out how to get around it," Sora continued, sounding very bored. "That's how I got out. But I was waiting for you to come back... It should have been weird that I never came back to you after so long. Didn't you notice...?"

"I did, but-"

"But you never did come," he finished with cold finality. "Well, that doesn't matter much now."

The eyes on the figure glimmered as if waking, and it lifted slightly higher from the ground. Silently it hovered towards Tsukasa, colors pulsing down it amid the white static: first white, then purple intermittent, and finally black, all of it mixed into a marbleized pattern that throbbed along a bloodless pulse. With each pulse it came closer, and Tsukasa could hear a noise that grows louder: screaming.

He faltered, clutching at his hears. Staggered back away from the thing - _Skeith_, it cries - with a cringe upon his face, but he could only go so far until he hit a wall. The apparition only came so close before it dissapeared entirely; Sora took its place instead, this time with his face intact. Sympathy was lacking in his eyes as well as his stance: arms crossed, hate brewing... "It's simple enough a technique to execute. Do you want to see? I could show you what she did to me, and maybe then you'll undertand why I'm upset with you, Tsukasa-kun."

The wall is painfully real, frighteningly cold. He watched Sora lift a hand up, palm down with his fingers dangling limply. Sparks of light fired up about his wrist, and the light coalesced into thin propeller-like sheets folded into sharply geometric petals, shining yellow and white and blue. They began to spin, gathering momentum, and arcs of electricity grow outwards, coiled like a serpent ready to strike. Tsukasa trembled, helpless little mouse.

The black around them is broken by a harsh stab of white, bright as lightning and lasting just as long. Sora turned sharply away, the panels about his wrist slowing down and the power running over them shrinking away from Tsukasa. Standing behind the Twin Blade was another Twin Blade in orange, crouched with one hand sticking straight out and another braced upon it at the elbow. Around his wrist lights are aglow as well, the true bracelet shining...

Eyes meet and there is recognition. The boy hesitates, glancing between Sora and the wavemaster frozen against a wall. "You... You were there with that staff!"

"Uninvited," Sora hissed angrily, "Yet again."

There is something in Sora's voice that is easily picked up on: malice, hatred, the voice of ill intent that was only amplified by a viscious glare. "Helba sent me," says the orange Twin Blade. "She said she was picking up a surge of data..."

Sora laughed like a madman. It was then that Kite knew he had stumbled into something worse than he could have imagined. Data surges usually translated into Phases, but he most certainly did not look like a Phase... "And here you are, blind hero to save the day!" snarled Sora. "You really should learn to mind your own business. Oh, well!"

Tsukasa does not see Sora move, and neither does the stranger. A shape flickers, dissapears, and then Sora is not where he was any longer, but behind the newcomer. A free fist, unbound by the Data Drain device, rose up and slammed hard into the nape of his neck, sending him down to the ground with a sharp outcry. Sora's sharp heel dug into the small of his back, pinning him down. Threads of black shapeless tendrils rose from the ground and envelop the hapless boy's body like spidersilk, rendering him immobile.

"You're Orca's friend," Sora said thoughtfully, leering down at his captive. "I'm afraid you just missed him. Maybe you can make it to his funeral... Oh, that's right, you're not going to leave this place. Curiosity killed the Kite, ha ha! But first..."

Against the wall Tsukasa was still trembling. Sora lifted his arm again, the self-made bracelet lightning back up like flames: the arch rose, coiled, tensed... He could hear Kite screaming for him to run, to get out of there as fast as he could. All Tsukasa could see, though, was the mad flashin Sora's eyes. Lightning danced across his orbs, shackles to a pained sorrow that was more than evident then. Tsukasa saw, and began to walk forward.

Sora was caught off guard. He dared approach him now? Such was not the proper way for Tsukasa to behave. He should have been frozen to the spot, shaking, begging forgiveness. Instead he was looking at Sora strangely, a shade of something that frightened him much more than enraged him. Stupidly, the wavemaster reached out a hand to grasp his. Lightning waited to spearhead him, devour his soul, bind him to The World forever. "Why don't you run?" Sora snaps, gritting teeth. "I didn't have the chance but you know you do."

"I won't," said Tsukasa. Fingers brushed against the energy and there was a sharp crackle: bits of his hand began to dissapear, pixellating and fading out in broken chunks of data. Pain took shape on Tsukasa's face for an instant before it was forced away by a calm demeanor, even as the Data Drain began to crawl up along his wrist, devouring bits of his arm...

"Why don't you run?" Sora asked again, screaming. The light became more than light: impossibly it brightened, subjecting the black maze top a near blinding white, though it only stretched so far. The darkness swallowed up the light that ventured out too far. Shapelessness dominateed, walls dissapeared: no one to register their presence, no need for them. They dissapeared, leaving the three even more alone.

"Because you're my friend."

Breath caught in Sora's throat. The Data Drain slowed, shrank, and died away into nothingness; appendages of thin lightning pulled away from Tsukasa's arm, returning to the bracelet that disapeared as well. Scraps of brown robe missing squares of data was all that remained of the arm: the hand had been taken clean off, eaten away. Tsukasa didn't seem to notice. He was watching Sora, who had become motionless... Almost motionless. His shoulders shuddered. He had forgotten how cold it was there in all the despair...

The black bindings around Kite dissapeared as well, and with it the field in its entirety melted away into mellowed light, like dawn but without all the colors. Crimson stared at the back of his head. "Go."

Kite squirmed in an attempt to look up at Sora but he caught Tsukasa looking straight at him then. The Wavemaster was smiling, violet eyes telling him that everything was going to be allright. Without a word, Kite dissapeared. Sora's foot thumped hollowly on the not-ground that was beneath him.

Tsukasa waited patiently, neigher retreating nor persuing any course of action. It took time but Sora's shoulders shudder again, and his head rose just enough to barely meet the other's eyes. In them he saw warmth, forgiveness... "I want to go home," he whispered.

With the only hand he had left, Tsukasa took Sora's. "Let's go home, Hiroshi-kun. Everyone's waiting to meet you."

--------

"It's changing again," muttered Isshin. He had been camped out at the ECG since An collapsed, being the first to notice that the patterns that flashed across the screen were changing.

Mariko and Kazuhiro were parked at An's sides, both visibly worried for obvious reasons. She had been propped up against Kazuhiro, gathered up from where she had fallen like a precious doll. She was still limp but momentary flashes of some inner strain crossed her face from time to time, concentration knitting her brow. It was an uncanny look that eased Kazuhiro's suspicions if only by a little bit. "Something's happening," he said, giving An's hand a squeeze. "She's doing something." Which was the sole reason why he had not sent for a nurse or doctor. It had only been a few minutes, twenty at themost, since An had gone unconscious, yet they could see changes in both An and Hiroshi's states of being.

Their patience was rewarded when An, snugged tight against the crook of Kazuhiro's arm, stirred. Quietly she moaned, squinting her eyes before opening them to look up into the faces of a very worried group.

"An!" Mariko breathed, nearly slumping over with relief. Megumi's face towered over her, bright and chipper but still deeply concerned. "Oh gosh, we were so worried..."

An, however, apparently had other concerns on her mind. Readily she squirmed out of Kazuhiro's grip, much to his chagrin, and scrambled to the bedside. Hiroshi's breathing seemed to have gotten stronger, as well as his pulse; the line bounced along at a steady, healthy pace. Carefully she reached down, taking hold of his hand again. At her touch he stirred, eyelids trembling as they were forced open. A fuzzy white ceiling hung above him. A collective gasp ran through the room and then fuzzy dark lumps dotted his peripheral vision. He had the same eyes in The World, An noted, but... brighter. The eyes of a child indeed, still charmed by wonder, however tainted.

Hiroshi blinked several times to force his eyes to focus, testing his vision out on what he realized were faces that watched him. Men, women, older and younger... None of them the one he sought. Weakly he turned his head to look off to the side. Waiting there was the gentle face of a young woman who smiled at him. He felt his hand recieve a squeeze to confirm that he was looking at who he thought he was looking at.

"Welcome home, Hiroshi."

His tongue ran over dry lips, which parted to release words that never came. Moisture gathered at his eyes, pooling at their corners. Knowingly, An bent down and tenderly wrapped her free arm around the boy's frail shoulders... He pulled himself up, in turn wrapping his arms around her. His head rested against her shoulder where Hiroshi Yanaka, a lost child no longer, wept in silence.

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**[[ _Cookies to anyone who can Name That Source of Inspiration! As blatant as it is. :) MZD rocks._]]**


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